Russia/USSR

As a young man I studied Russian language and literature and wrote a master's thesis about Nikita Khrushchev. Then in 1989, while on a semester long exchange program, I taught English in a high school in Moscow. No surprise then that I recently got hold of Sergei Khrushchev's Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower. The book provides some fascinating reading about how Nikita Khrushchev tried to make his country an equal of the US and increase in Moscow the production of consumer goods in the Soviet Union. My videotaped interview of Sergei Khrushchev about this book will appear in a month or two either directly on this site or as a link to YouTube.

To read reviews about a book or order it, click on its title. To quickly reach one of the subtopics immediately below, click on it.

Russia/USSR

Berkovich, Gary. Watching Communism Fail: A Memoir of Life in the Soviet Union . McFarland, 2008. The author’s tale of growing up Jewish in the Soviet Union, forced relocation to Siberia, and eventual emigration.

Cherkashin, Victor. Spy Handler: Memoir of a KGB Officer . Basic Books, 2004. Former KGB agent, recalls recruiting and handling CIA agents Aldrich Ames and Hanssen as KGB spies  and discusses the weaknesses in the CIA and other spy agencies.

Gray, Francine du Plessix.  Them:  A Memoir of Parents .  New York Times Co., 2005.  By a woman who left the Soviet Union for France when she was a girl.

Khrushchev, Sergei.  Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower .  Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003.  The former Soviet leader's son on his father's career and the development of Soviet weapons.  Howard's Pick.

Krivitsky, Walter G.  In Stalin's Secret Service:  Memoirs of the First Soviet Master Spy to Defect .  Enigma Books, 2000.  Stalin's secret police killed the author, the KGB's former top espionage agent in Western Europe in the heart of Washington, D.C.

Linden, Anne Bates.  Assumptions and Misunderstandings:  Memoir of an Unwitting Spy .  Misto-NV, 2006.  Based on letters from author's Peace Corps experience in the Ukraine.

Lindenmeyr, Adele, Rassweiler, Anne D., and Bek, Anna.  Life of a Russian Woman Doctor:  A Siberian Memoir, 1869-1954 .  Indiana University Press, 2004.

Mandelstam, Nadezha. Hope Against Hope: A Memoir . Modern Library. 1999. The wife of poet Osip Mandelstam remembers the final four years she was with her husband before he was killed for writing that satirised Stalin.

Mozhaev, Boris A., Solzhenitsyn, Alexander I. and Holohan, David M.  'Lively' and Other Stories by Boris Mozhaev & A Memoir by Alexander Solzhenitsyn .  Hodgson Press, 2008.  A memoir of everyday life in Russia in the 20th Century.

Palazchenko, Pavel.  My Years with Gobachev and Shevardnadze:  The Memoir of a Soviety Interpreter .  Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.

Ratushinskaya, Irina. Grey Is Color of Hope . Vintage, 1989. A poet’s account of her arrest, subsequent seven years' hard labor in a Soviet gulag and five years internal exile (for writing “anti-Soviet” poetry.), and her exile to the West in 1986.

Shepilov, Dmitri.  The Kremlin's Scholar:  A Memoir of Soviet Politics Under Stalin and Khrushchev .  Yale University Press, 2007.  A former Soviet leader under Stalin shares first-hand accounts of other Communist politicians.